10cc
The Original Soundtrack (reissue, 1975)
PROPER
8/10
Vinyl reissue series continues with pop subversives’ fate-changing third
An early taste of “I’m Not In Love” was enough to convince Phonogram to sign up the song’s creators for a five-album deal in 1975, thereby much improving 10cc’s declining fortunes (alas, the band had hoped to sign to Virgin instead). Now reissued alongside 1978’s Bloody Tourists, the group’s third album marks a significant advance in several respects, with their experimental soft-rock smash pointing toward future subversions of form. Nine-minute opener “Un Nuit A Paris” remains the best realised of their stabs at prog-operetta, and the glam pomp of “Life Is A Minestrone” is equally exhilarating. That said, the racial epithet that mars “The Second Sitting Of The Last Supper” is one of several aspects that mark The Original Soundtrack as a product of its era, the album’s arch music-hall trappings being less compelling than its displays of post-Beatles innovation and proto-Britpop brashness.
Extras: 6/10. 180g vinyl comes packaged in faithful replica of original Hipgnosis gatefold sleeve. JASON ANDERSON
ALBERT AYLER
Europe 1966
ORG MUSIC
9/10
Sax great’s singular live set
Taken from the same run of shows as his acclaimed Lorrach/Paris 1966 LP, this lovingly curated set represents an artist at the very height of an incendiary career tragically curtailed by his death in 1970. The evidence here is that Ayler was only just beginning to unlock unmapped stratospheres. The Berlin set’s opener, “Truth Is Marching On”, is a phasing, juddering, warped assault on the brass band, at once a brutal eulogy and a revolutionary call to arms. The Stockholm version highlights the singularity of the piece with its blurred monophony; the highly underrated Donald Ayler on trumpet shines until Albert scorches at the climax. It’s a marvel that Ayler’s technical ability and scope were documented with such reverence then, and issued here with such care. JACK MILNER
BEF
Music For Stowaways
COLD SPRING
8/10
Lost synthpop statement restored to print
As the ’80s dawned, Sheffield electronic vanguardists The Human League were shucking off their experimental beginnings and eyeing the charts. But vocalist Phil Oakey’s pop instincts brought him into conflict with founders Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, who in 1980 jumped ship to pursue a new vision. British Electric Foundation were not just a group, but a production company working under the auspices of Virgin Records, churning out cutting-edge electronics on a project-by-project basis. was the first fruits of this new
